Julia Pirotte

• Name — Julia Pirotte • Birth Name — Julia Diament • Born — 26 September 1907 • Birthplace — Końskowola, Congress Poland • Died — 25 July 2000 • Place of death — Warsaw, Poland • Resting Place — Powązki Cemetery • Field — Photography, War Photography, Resistance • Occupation — Photojournalist • Era — 20th century • Political Party — Communist Party of Poland • Movement — Communism • Criminal Charges — Political activity • Criminal Penalty — 4 years imprisonment • Spouse — * Jean-Claude Pirotte • Jefim Sokolski • Mother — Sura Szejnfeld • Father — Boruch Diament

Born Julia Diament in Końskowola, a town in Congress Poland, she was one of three children – a sister, Mindla Maria Diament and a brother, Majer Diament. She and her siblings were self-taught due to their inability to attend school due to the then-political atmosphere. Diament and her sister were members of the Communist Party of Poland – hostile to the system of the new Polish state, which gained independence after 123 years of partition. She and her sister were persecuted due to their support for communism in Poland after Polish–Soviet War in 1919–1921.

In 1925 she was imprisoned for communist activities. Threatened by another arrest, she emigrated to Belgium in 1934 where she married Jean Pirotte, a labor activist in Brussels, and studied photography. In May 1940, after the German occupation of Belgium and the deportation of her husband, Pirotte made her way to southern France, where she played an active role in Jewish and French resistance groups. Based in Marseille, she worked as a photojournalist for Dimanche Illustré and served as a courier for weapons, false papers and underground publications in a resistance group, the FTP-MOI. During this time she took numerous photographs documenting life under the Vichy Regime. As a member of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans, she was able to photograph the activities of the Maquis resistance in the summer of 1944 and the liberation of Marseille. After the war, Pirotte returned to Poland as a photojournalist for the Polish periodical Zolnierz Polski. During that period she covered the aftermath of the Kielce Pogrom of 4 July 1946 and attended the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace of 1948 in Wrocław, taking portraits of Pablo Picasso, Irène Joliot-Curie and Dominique Desanti. Pirotte visited Israel in 1957. She later married Jefim Sokolski, a Polish economist who died in 1974. Pirotte's sister Mindla Maria Diament (1911 – 24 August 1944) was a member of the French Resistance, she was captured and tortured before being deported and executed in Breslau.

Julia married Jean-Claude Pirotte in 1935, which helped her gain Belgian citizenship.